Re:Google employees who work from home could lose money
by oceanplexian on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @11:18AM
(#28129876)
The cost of the A/C and janitorial staff is peanuts compared to the money they spent on commercial real estate. If they don’t get ROI, someone is going to be held accountable. If the offices close and the value of commercial real estate plummets there are huge players that are going to be wiped out, with macro-economic ramifications. It’s a perfect example of sunk cost fallacy, but on the scale of billions of dollars.
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Re:Google employees who work from home could lose money
by igetspam on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @01:41PM
(#28131834)
It's been a while for me but I recall that a significant amount of the real estate already existed. I worked in a number of buildings in MTV, starting before the SGI retrofit. Most were old and had little done to them. There was new construction (mYbe the Zurich office, with Urs' apartment on top?) but way more remodeling. I know they built the housing near moffet but how much other real estate did they really do from the ground up? And how a big of a dent is that? (I'd eager there's some tax magic there too.)
My point is, G can afford the losses on selling some buildings and have unused capacity without hurting their stock price.
Re:Google employees who work from home could lose money
by celestialcheese on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @02:38PM
(#28132523)
Google has something close to $50B in real estate holdings. They announced $7B in real estate spending in 2021. [1]
That press release reads more like a "head of state" spending in key constituent areas for some policy changes needed. Shovels in dirt wins politicians, and Google needs all the help it can get with the looming antitrust issues.
[1] - https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/inve...